Every so often, a random fisherman in Florida or Australia will hook some aquatic monster that wasn’t meant to see the light of day. At least not until the Great Old One awakens from its deep slumber.
Either way, here are some of the most bizarre fish caught around the world.
1. Oarfish
In Chile, a group of fishermen caught a rare fish that looked like an eel or a snake. It was a deep-sea giant oarfish over five meters long. Many believe that this particular fish is a harbinger of disaster. In Japan, for example, the oarfish is associated with an upcoming earthquake or tsunami, and they also believe that whoever finds such a fish will be cursed. Such legends originated in 2011 when dozens of oarfish were spotted before the Fukushima earthquake.
2. Arapaima
Florida has experienced one biological disaster after another in recent years: Burmese pythons, South American green iguanas, Indo-Pacific lionfish, and recently the Amazonian arapaima was thrown onto the banks of one of the local rivers. Those are all invasive species capable of messing up the fragile ecosystem. Arapaima, in particular, is a powerful, voracious predator with impenetrable scales that even razor-toothed piranhas cannot bite through.
3. Giant Grouper
In 2019, a US fisherman Jason Boyle reeled in a catch of a lifetime in the coastal waters of Florida — a fish measuring 189 cm and weighing 159 kg. As it turned out later, the monstrous catch was a giant grouper. Experts from the Florida Wildlife and Fisheries Research Institute assumed that the grouper was approximately 50 years old.
